


a littlepiece

by neonunau



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:52:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29831430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonunau/pseuds/neonunau
Summary: how long can you resist when the sea calls to you at night?
Kudos: 2





	a littlepiece

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted to neonun-au.tumblr.com

When Jeno was sent to the island he was sent with a warning. 

Don’t listen to the sea. 

It was the same warning that had been given to his father, and to his father before him, and to all the men in his ancestry as far back as records were kept. Don’t listen to the sea. 

When he was a child, safe in his bed, his father would spin him tales of his time on the island. Tales of the grey waves breaking white upon greyer shore. The rocks slippery with the sweat of the sky, salty with the remains of the rain and the kiss of the sea. He would tell him how the seagulls overhead would fly in circles and spirals; waiting for an unfortunate sailor to slip upon the basalt and fall to an untimely death, whereupon they would descend in a tornado of feathers and wings eager to snatch their pound of red flesh. 

The stories frightened Jeno, and they entranced him. As he grew older, and the time of his inevitable journey to that very same island loomed ever closer, the tales would take on more depth and urgency. His father would sit up late, still and stoic in his old wooden rocking chair, a pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, and he would beckon Jeno over with a glance. There they would sit in the orange glow of the fireplace into the small hours of the night. Jeno would sit, and his father would speak. 

“Don’t listen to the sea,” he would say, “for she lies. The waves whisper your name in the dark of the night but stay tucked tight in your bed until the grey dawn breaks over the horizon. Don’t listen to the song sung under the light of the stars. It is a falsehood spun by the mouths of thieves. They will steal your heart and they will steal your life.” 

Jeno’s heart would race in his chest, waves of his own pounding against his ribcage as he sat listening in horror and awe. Listening to what fate awaited him on the island of his forefathers. On the island entrusted to them and their lineage. 

“The days are lonely,” his father would warn, exhaling a breath of grey smoke, “and the nights are long, but you must resist the temptation to wade into those waters. Hold fast to your loneliness like an anchor and it will bring you back when your time is up. When you see the ship on the horizon, drawn by the light of the house that you maintain, then you will know you have made it. Then you will have fulfilled your duties. You will come home safe.” 

Now, as he stands on the rocky precipice of the island, his father’s words ring clear in his mind. As clear as the lighthouse shining out through the impermeable clouds that hover low over the island. As clear as the foghorn bellowing from the deck of the ship that had carried him here over treacherous waters. 

Don’t listen to the sea. 

He means not to, at first. He bides his time with the list of duties scrawled almost illegibly across salt-stained parchment. Jeno keeps the fire and coal stoked in the lighthouse--keeps himself warm, keeps the light shining into the darkness. He maintains the island as best as he can, watching the seagulls draw circles with their wings in the sky overhead as he works. 

He returns each day to his room, soaked through with sweat and rain, and tucks himself into the ancient cot in the corner of the damp, musty room. No space is free from the stench of the sea. Everything tastes of salt. Everything smells of the weight of the waves. He closes his eyes, wrapped in the scent of it, and tries to rest his weary mind, body aching from the day of toil. 

That’s when the singing starts. 

At first he thinks he’s imagining it. The melody carried to his ears by the wind is nothing but a figment of his idle mind. But it doesn’t take long--maybe weeks, maybe months--for the songs to take shape and to make themselves whole. They know his name now, they sing it to him in the dark of the night--in the hours between dusk and dawn. He can hear them calling to him through the thick black. 

“Jeno,” they sing, their voices high and enchanting, “Jeno.” 

In vain he tries to block out the sounds. At first he merely seeks to force deafness upon himself by blocking his ears with whatever is available. His fingers, his pillow, an old handkerchief embroidered lovingly by his mother. Then he tries to drown out their songs with a song of his own. Humming at first the melodies of his childhood, then raising his voice to a pitch he didn’t even know he possessed until now in the hour of his desperation. 

Each time they seem to join him, raising their voices in harmony with his own. Amused by his attempts at ignoring them. 

So he begins to repeat a mantra, “don’t listen to the sea.” 

It works, for a time. Maybe a year, maybe two. But then the loneliness comes, crashing over him like a wave against the cliffs outside. It settles into his bones and winds its way like the sea breeze; through his skin, tying itself in a sailor’s knot around his heart. He braces himself against it--he knew it would come eventually--but he didn’t realize just how painful it was. The warnings from his father had been too abstract, too vague. They didn’t convey just how achingly hollow life would be on the island. Alone, with nothing but the seagulls and the endless, grey sea to keep him company. 

It makes him want to cry. And sometimes he does; letting his tears fall while he chops wood outside, allowing the salted tears from within to mingle with the salted tears crying down from the sky overhead. The grey is misery as it surrounds him without relent. An endless miasma of misty sky shrouding him and keeping him trapped, soaking in his own loneliness day in and day out without fail. And the songs at night, those same bewitching melodies, wear down his resolve--chipping away at his sanity bit by bit until he can hardly breathe for the desperation cloying at his frayed mind. 

If he just knew how long until the ship would come. If he knew the exact day that would mark the end of his inherited duties--that would mark the end of the debt to his bloodline--then he might have been able to resist. He might have made a friend of his loneliness, rather than an enemy. But the not knowing pierces his heart with its dull anguish and he begins to hate it. More than he has hated anything in his life. He spites his ever present loneliness, he spites the seagulls flying lazy circles overhead, and most of all he spites the sea. 

The sea that is his only home and his only refuge--the sea that is meant to carry him forth from this living hell of an island. The same grey sea that carried him towards it. He hates it even as he loves it. 

In the dark it looks so much friendlier. He steps out one night, onto slippery rock, and walks down to the pier on shaky legs. There is a break in the clouds above him, the stars and the moon twinkle down in speckles of silver light and turn the water into a painting. 

A canvas of black and blue broken here and there by the reflections of the cosmos. He stands in awe as it stretches out before him and almost loses himself in the vista before the song begins again. 

“Jeno,” he hears the sea sing to him. His name is a gentle sigh on the cool breeze of the night and he sinks into the sound, taking a step onto the wooden pier. The desire to be near to the source of the song overwhelms him. It grips his senses and urges him forward even as his father’s voice is a dull ache in the back of his mind. 

Don’t listen to the sea.

_ ‘But father,’ _ he thinks, as he comes face to face with the towering wave,  _ ‘I am the sea.’  _

His loneliness floods free from his body as he feels himself embraced by the inky black waters. It breaks over him, it’s many arms surrounding him, welcoming him home, and he smiles at the scent of salt as it hits his body--rocking him backwards with the force of it before he is pulled forward. Pulled under. 

Their faces appear to him in the darkness, teeth glinting white in the silvery reflection of the moonlight. They smile as they pull him further into the endless night of the water they inhabit. 

Jeno remembers, in the final moments of his last breath, his father’s final story. His final warning. 

“Don’t listen to the sea,” he began as he always did, “it holds creatures as beautiful as they are dangerous, and I have seen many a foolish sailor torn from the arms of life by their greedy claws. Each time they are promised solace--freedom from their loneliness. It is always a lie. It is always blood that they want.” 


End file.
